Your Responsibilities

I wake up in the dorm. It's 2:00 am. I get up to use the bathroom. Mark is also up, and with me. "Hey, let's get treats out of the freezer and watch tv," he says. I am reticent, I want to get back to bed. I go to the bathroom; we get separated for awhile. The bathroom is also a vast locker room. There are shelves upon shelves of every kind of candy and chocolate bar. Standing next to someone at a urinal, he remarks that the Butterfingers always disappear first. Back in the halls, many many students are now filing around. Perhaps it has become day. I see JP and LCS walking in the halls. I stay ahead of them, pretending not to see them. JP is angry at me for I have wronged her, and she doesn't want to talk to me anyway. JP eventually becomes MK. Oh, remember at prom last summer we had sex and now she has my baby. She didn't want my help or any kind of relationship, but she has my son now. 

I meet back up with Mark in an office in one of the halls. I remember the plan to watch tv. We go to the dorm MK shares with someone else. A large, windowed room with a kitchenette and an attached bedroom. At first the baby's asleep and I think she doesn't want me to see the baby. I sit on the couch awkwardly. At some point Sam is sitting next to me and talking about how he has quoted me in his thesis -- about exchanging tokens of value for money, and how at last I have seen the light. I think about my thesis, how I have already done the hard research and how it has some substance to it. I have done the hard work already, but I still have to write it. 

I have seen glimpses of my son before, but now he comes out of the bedroom. He is toddling around, and he can kind of speak. He is sad and angry -- he is no longer the baby, somebody else has had another baby and he's jealous. No, I assure him, you will always be the baby. He says something I can't quite understand, but seems quite angry and violent. I hug him, his tears get my shirt wet. I am worried, will he hurt me because he seems angry and violent? But he's just a baby. 

More people come in and sit on the couch. A woman I knew in high school and her husband. Doesn't he work at Seattle Rep, I think? Many people sit on the couch, flirting. I am careful not to touch the woman next to me too much. That's flirting, it's not for me anymore. Does MK need money to raise the baby? I have lots. She hasn't asked for any, but I could give her some. No son of mine should ever want for anything and all that. We are leaving. MK asks me to fix the frame of her door; I say maybe Mark could help me. We examine it -- it is lined with some wearing rustic wood. Mark opines that he can easily reface it. 

He and I head back to our dorm. We step through a broken fence into a playground on our way home. Oh my god, I think, I have a son -- I will have to tell L. And I cheated on her, too. How can I have done this? How can this have happened to me? I think about remarking something to Mark about it. But I don't say anything.

Anxiety

In a college town. The usual sense of inadequacy: I am going to classes and trying to keep up, but I am almost certainly failing many of them. Will it be okay? I have an international flight soon. L is not concerned -- I am not checking any bags, I have TSA Pre; I can walk right in and just get on the plane. I am eating an odd breakfast -- savory vegetables with hot coffee poured on top -- with another companion at something like the college cafeteria. Do I need to leave for the airport? Not yet, apparently. We go to see a speaker in a Carnegie-Hall like auditorium. We are at the very top row of the last balcony. As I am finding my seat, I hear the drone of speaker, who sounds exactly like Reverend Lovejoy on the Simpsons. This stops me; I listen closer and his voice obligingly becomes somewhat different. I sit down next to L. "How long until my flight leaves?" She looks at her watch. "15 minutes," she says. 15 minutes! That's not enough time! You have to be on board an international flight 30 minutes before takeoff, and I'm not even at the airport yet! How can she let me have wasted this much time? I jump up, "where is the airport from here? Is it close?" Yes, it's right there, she points. I have upset her. I'm on the street trying to run, but it's a dream and all I can do is a leaden amble. This, perhaps, clues me in to the fact that I am dreaming. "You won't find the airport," I tell myself, "You are in an anxiety dream now. You might as well wake up." I decide I want to keep looking for it, and wander about the streets for a few more minutes. But I know I won't make the flight--too much time has gone by. I wake myself up.